Kings to go on Richie Rich-style spending spree
What?
With only 14 players under contract and the team $13ish million below the league’s cap floor, you have to wonder what the Kings are up to since this article was published almost two weeks ago.
They haven’t signed anyone of significance, at all. Peter Harrold has been it (signed July 22) and the terms of his contract aren’t disclosed yet, which is curious. Dean Lombardi seems too smart to give him a Jeff Finger contract, so that leaves LA with, say, $10.5-11 million and only three restricted free agents to sign. How they flesh out the rest of the roster is anyone’s guess.
But rumors are beginning to swirl that perhaps the reports in the Boston Globe from a few weeks ago (that Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck is leading a group that is trying to buy a significant minority share in the Kings) are true, and that’s what’s holding up everything. If that is the case, that certainly explains the Kings’ inactivity so far.
The question is whether or not the Kings decide they want to compete this year (they can’t) or enter the Tavares sweepstakes and blow it up and miss the playoffs for the sixth season in a row, sinking farther into irrelevance in the second-biggest hockey market in North America (they will).
July 30th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Someone’s been reading too much HF lately. All they need to do is resign their RFAs, sign Doughty, and sign a defenseman for about 1.7M.
No spending spree required.